With the continuing rise in popularity of light trucks, vans and four-wheel drive sport utility vehicles, there exists a need to provide tires that have the ability to be driven on paved roads without excessive noise yet also to be capable of being driven in heavy snow or off paved roads in soft sand or muddy soil. Often these tires will be driven in flooded or wet roadway conditions. As an added condition, these multipurpose traction demands for the tire must be coupled with excellent tread wear.
Historically, tires have been able to meet one or two of the above-referenced design requirements but usually at the sacrifice of the other design features.
Snow tires and off road tires could achieve good traction usually by opening the tread pattern and providing large block type tread elements. These tires generally were very noisy and had poor tread wear when driven at highway speeds on paved roads. The WRANGLER MT.RTM. disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,823,855 is an example of the aggressive style tread pattern needed for aggressive off road applications.
A latter developed asymmetric non-directional tire was developed for the light truck and sport utility vehicles called the WRANGLER GSA.RTM.. This tire employed a unique triple traction feature that provides excellent uniform wear across the tread pattern regardless of the wheel position. The tire has good noise, and more than adequate traction in a variety of conditions such as snow, off road, and on road wet or dry. The tread pattern disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,415,215 was one of the first truly multipurpose tires for these types of vehicles. The WRANGLER GSA.RTM. tire has been commercially very successful.
From that tire, a superior wet traction tire was developed employing two wide aquachannels in combination with the triple traction feature. The tire has been entitled the WRANGLER AQUATRED.RTM. and it is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,658,404. This tire demonstrated that deep water traction could be enhanced without sacrificing the wear and other performance features of the original WRANGLER GSA.RTM. tire.
The WRANGLER AQUATRED.RTM. demonstrated that while the all around performance of these light truck and sport utility vehicle tires must be very good, some drivers still have special needs or concerns requiring the more specialized type tire performance in one or more feature.
There has been a continual trade-off in attempting to increase the aggressive off road and snow tractive performance of the these tires while maintaining the tread wear durability and good ride performance constraints.
The invention disclosed in this patent application teaches a novel tread that is both good riding and long wearing while also achieving excellent off road traction.